Award for Wick-based archive centre
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Nucleus – The Nuclear and Caithness Archive – is the latest Scottish service to be awarded accredited archive status.
Encompassing the national archive of the UK civil nuclear industry, the Nucleus facility in Wick is also home to the historical archive for the county.
It becomes the 10th service based in Scotland to achieve the accredited status.
The accreditation panel congratulated the local team and stakeholders on their work in recent years in establishing a high-quality, risk-managed and effective preservation and access facility for the nuclear and Caithness collections.
While acknowledging that there were areas of work still developing, they noted that the robust nature of provision and planning, and the institutional support to address emerging challenges, gave real confidence in the service’s capacity to continue its progress.
They also discussed and applauded the service’s positive engagement with the community, as a major local employer, supporting staff development and in its engagement with the wider population of Caithness.
Based at the striking, purpose-built site near Wick John O'Groats Airport, Nucleus holds the records of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), including plans, drawings, photographs, film, microfiche and documents from the past 70 years of the UK civil nuclear industry.
These have previously been held at various sites across the UK including Dounreay, Harwell in Oxfordshire, Trawsfynydd in Snowdonia and Sellafield in Cumbria. The record relocation programme is said to have made excellent progress over the past three years and will take several more years to complete.
The archives of Caithness date from 1469 to the present day and consist of documents in different formats including charters, minute books, correspondence, maps, photographs and plans.
Simon Tucker, chairman and managing director of NDA Archives Limited, welcomed the award, saying: “I am delighted with this news. This now completes a three-year programme of accreditation that the teams at Nucleus and within the NDA should be rightly proud of.
"Many individuals have worked very hard since we opened Nucleus in 2017 and the successful attainment of this award, Place of Deposit status and compliance with a number of international standards demonstrates the quality of the staff, the facility itself and the work that is done there.
"I am looking forward to continuing to work with the archive community in sharing best practice and providing a first-class service to all of our stakeholders for many years to come.”
Paul Lowe, keeper of the records of Scotland, said: “I am pleased to congratulate Nucleus – The Nuclear and Caithness Archive – on achieving accredited archive status.
"The archive service accreditation scheme provides national recognition of excellence within the sector. It is greatly encouraging to see yet another Scottish archive successfully achieving the standard, in recognition of their good work.”
